Currently, nearly 90% of all prices of consumer goods and services in the Netherlands are psychological, conveniently broken or round prices. After converting these 'attractive' guilder prices into euro using the official conversion rate, the resulting euro prices are generally not attractive....

In this report a stochastic general equilibrium model is developed, which is intended for monetary policy analysis on a EU-level. The focus is on two central elements. First, liquidity effects of monetary policy are studied in the model. It appears that not only frictions on the credit markets,...

This report provides a critical review of the Boskin-report and discusses possible implications for the cpi in the Netherlands. Moreover, two recent American suggestions to reduce the bias are discussed. The report concludes that although it is likely that the cpi overestimates the increase of...

In this paper we discuss whether the introduction of the euro may cause price changes. Besides a critical survey of the theoretical arguments supporting price effects, we discuss the empirical evidence on price effects obtained from comparable events. Neither the theoretical arguments nor the...

The Dutch changeover to euro banknotes and coins proceeded both smoothly and swiftly. In spite of this Dutch consumers are still in the process of familiarising themselves with the new currency. One out of three still has not got the hang of the euro as a unit of account. Remarkably, ever since...

This report contains two simulation studies to quantify the direct economic effects of the Marshall aid on the Dutch economy. The first model is a general empirical model and the other the 1962 macro-economic policy model of the Dutch CPB.

This report addresses the question whether economic theory can explain the choice of payment media for over-the-counter payments. A survey of the literature reveals that most of the existing microeconomic models are limited to the explanation of the size of cash balance. Only two models describe...

This paper assesses the performance of core inflation measures based on the structural VAR approach. Since core or monetary inflation is not directly observable, we develop a monetary general equilibrium model that fits real aggregated European data and use this model to generate time series for...

This report described the production of bio-ethanol, its environmental properties and commercial perspectives. Finally, the justifications of and possibilities for government intervention are discussed which intend to stimulate the substitution of fossiel with renewable fuels. The importance of...